Balancing a Job and Homeschooling Your Children

Over in the Sonlight Facebook page, I have often seen people asking how people can balance a job and homeschool their children. While I realize that it can be challenging, it isn’t quite as hard of a task to do as you might imagine.

I have been running a daycare for many months now, and homeschooling our 5 children. Let me tell you it is exhausting, but it sure can be done. I can imagine it wouldn’t be much different for any job either inside or outside the house either. Sometimes in your life, you need to add in a job for financial reasons, but don’t want to give up homeschooling your children. This is a great alternative option.

As far as the daycare in our home, I do have 8 children, but only 1 of them is full time. The rest of them come maybe 1 or 2 days a week or every other week. Some I drop off and pick up from school. We have learned on days that we have a bunch of kids coming we need to get that work done during the other days in the week. That way our school will get done. We have come to the realization that no one can work well if all 8 kids are here for the day.

In my opinion, it isn’t any different than if you have extra kids of your own. You would learn to find ways to keep the little kids busy or work around them in order to get everything done. That is exactly what you would do if you have extra kids in your home or work outside the house.

How I Manage A Job and Homeschooling Our Children

Group Classes Together –Due to the fact that we have 5 children we are teaching, I group together classes. The best classes that we group together are history, geography, Bible, science. This way I’m not teaching all these classes to each of the kids every day. It makes things easier for everyone. Plus I just really enjoy all my kids working together in group classes.

Use a Planned Curriculum – We have been using Sonlight curriculum with our kids. It is great because I don’t have to worry about planning out the curriculum for the kids. All I have to do is pull it out every day and implement the class, and then let the kids know what they need to do for their group classes.

Have As Many Independent Classes As Possible – I have taught the kids to work independently on as many classes as they can. I am always there to help them if they should need it.

Take Care Of Yourself – This is so important not only if we homeschool and work, but even if we just do one or the other. Taking care of yourself by getting at least 8 hours of sleep, eating healthy, drinking plenty of water, and living as stress-free as possible.

Follow A Schedule –Now if there is anything I know about having a big family is that things happen to like all the time… So I suggest that you make a “loose” schedule to follow to best manage your time. Knowing that flexibility is important. This will help you best manage your time while you are balancing a job and homeschool.

Do What You Can When You Can– Use your free time the best you can. If you need to look at your kid’s school work before you go to bed at night instead of during the day, then do it. Due to the fact that you are managing multiple things life can be busy. Learn to do what you can when you can. Some things will fall off the bandwagon, there just isn’t enough hours a day. Prioritize so what does fall off the bandwagon isn’t the most important thing. Give yourself grace!!

Get Stuff Done On Weekends –I know it may seem completely terrible to have your children do their school on the weekends. Sometimes it needs to happen to make everything work. If you didn’t have time during the week to get that group class or science experiment done that’s OK. Just plan it for the weekend instead. Or even have dad do it.

I’m sure as time goes on we will learn many other ideas. These are the ones that have worked best for us, at least at this stage in our life.

Do You Have a Job and Homeschool your Children?

Do you work outside the home an still manage to homeschool your kids? If so what are some tricks and tips you have learned along the way? Leave a comment below letting me know, I would love to hear from you!

Make sure you head over and follow Sonlight on Pinterest, there are so many great homeschool ideas shared there, I’m sure you will be glad you did!

Disclaimer:We were provided with the Sonlight curriculum and in exchange, we are sharing our experience with the program and homeschooling. We were not required to write a positive review, nor were we compensated in any other way. All opinions are the honest opinions of my children or myself.

Hello, I’m Nicole

I am a homeschool mama to 6 blessings. We have homeschooled our children for 13 years now and wouldn’t change it for anything. We have children from 7 years old up through 19 now. To learn more about us or for some ideas on where to start head over to our

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